Rex Ronan will teach you something if you’ve somehow forgotten that smoking is bad

It will take more than a tiny surgeon to remove all of that kusoge

I think most people my age have some preference for edutainment games. Back when Mortal Kombat corrupting our youth and turning them into whirling savages, many parents and schools decided that video games might perhaps be harnessed for the power of good. There are some decent examples of this: Oregon Trail, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, Cross country USA (or Cross-country Canadasince I grew up there). Then there are those we make fun of.

Raya Systems has brought out a number of games on the SNES and out of it Captain Novolin is the one you’ve most likely heard of. It was a game about juvenile diabetes featuring an adult diabetes superhero, and it was made to punish children with diabetes.

Raya has commissioned three other, lesser-known games for the SNES. They all sound hilarious so I’ll be on board for each of them, but today I have for you Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon.

Rex Ronan is the story of the eponymous experimental surgeon. Today on the operating table lies Jake Westboro, a tobacco CEO who dies from the effects of his lifelong smoking. A surgeon cannot play god in deciding who lives or who dies, but children can. To sweeten the deal, if Rex can save his life, Jake will talk about how smoking kills. That was in 1994. I had already learned three things at school: blue whales are absolute units, greenhouse gases heat the earth and smoking kills. I’m not sure what Jake can add to this argument, but whatever, as long as he’s insured.

So it’s that Fantastic trip Setup where the surgeon downsizes to save the patient on a microscopic level. This is the last time I’ll bring it up Fantastic tripbecause I didn’t see it. Most of my knowledge about it comes from this episode of The Venture Bros.

Rex’s job is to clean up all of the crap Jake has accumulated from his years as an executive. Actually, cross that out, because I learned quickly that you can do less than a symbolic effort and still win. Jake’s teeth are the cleanest part of his body now because I haven’t touched any of those precancerous cells or plaques. I don’t earn enough for that. I also have no work ethic. Or ethics in general.

Mainly because the tobacco company pelted Jake with a series of nano-bots to keep Rex Ronan from saving him, which is an absolutely amazing narrative detail. So you’re telling me that the tobacco company developed nanomachines. And you also tell me that they don’t just use them to praise Jake. I shouldn’t have to tell a tobacco company how to be badass, especially since I’m just chaotically neutral.

So unless you really need to remove karmic buildup from the lungs of an evil or ridiculously naive executive, what’s the point? Just to get to the end of the level. Cleaning up will only get you points, and you’ll forgive me if I don’t want the “Highest Score” title Rex Ronan. There is no bad ending, so most of the time you can just go through the game and let your patient fester.

Maybe I didn’t Rex Ronan sound bad enough, but just try to play. It controls like a shopping cart that has just entered its rebellious teenage years. You have two kicks and good luck hitting something with it. The camera manages to crush one of my biggest annoyances: it lets you get too close to the edge of the screen. Instead of pointing the camera at Rex like it would with any sane product, quickly slide to the edge so you can run into enemies before you even know they’re there. If you have enough runway, you can actually half slide yourself off the screen, and I don’t know why the universe doesn’t just step in there.

There are also two weapons that you mysteriously cannot switch between at will. No, you use purple capsules to change weapons and since one of these is only good for cleaning, juggling is … impossible. But remember, you don’t have to clean, so grab a capsule to put your weapon into battle mode and focus on the robots.

On some missions you fly through the body in a small ship, and while I would compare these sections with Star fox, that would be too flattering a picture. they are more like Channel shark on the Sega CD. Fortunately, you don’t have to clean up all of the crap that’s clogging Jake’s arteries, so you can dodge obstacles until the end.

The entire educational element of Rex Ronan comes by using these little quiz bombs during the game. They are true and false, and if the question is true, the bomb will clear the screen of enemies. If they are wrong they should be ignored, which means they will do nothing.

However, they are quite simple. If the game asks a question that makes smoking sound terrible, like, “If you smoke, we need to remove your jaw,” you know it’s true. If it says something less serious like “smoking after sex will help you reduce your erection after taking Viagra”, you know it is wrong.

But then you can just go into the options and turn off those “smart bombs” because what better way to play an edutainment game than to skip the entire educational part of it?

Fortunately, the game takes about an hour, which I assume, so kids can finish it before their nicotine habit kicks in. You can play again if you want to try to get the high score, but I’ve already given that opportunity.

If the intent of the game was to teach me how bad smoking is for you, the numerous PPE’s that got jammed between my Saturday morning cartoons have already done so. I’m pretty sure most of my Saturday Morning cartoons cover this fact at least once per season.

I would also use the word “entertainment” without adding the ironic quotes. Most of the joy of Rex Ronan came because I made fun of it. I enjoyed writing this article more than actually playing the game. So that’s it. And really, that’s enough to get me interested in the rest of the Raya games.

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Zoey Handley

Zoey is a crazy gaming hobby. She has played video games all her life and is a lover of new and retro games. She enjoys digging through the dirt and picking out the games that are perfectly fine if you clean them up a bit.